baking a tartlette

I'm baking a new type of dish right now.

You loyal readers will say, "But Sarah! We all know that you're not a baker! You never post about pies or bread or cakes! What gives? What's up with the tartlette?"

Well, here's what's up: I'm pregnant! This Tart is going to have a Tartlette sometime around January 23. In the meantime, we're having all sorts of fun with the food analogies. Ed calls me la boulangerie now, and I've been telling people that since I'm a French teacher, I have a croissant (instead of a bun) in the oven. "Croissant" is perfect, even better than "tartlette" (except perhaps in our little blog community), because it's the present participle of the verb croitre, which means "to grow" in French. Yep, croissant means "growing." See? I told you it was perfect!

But now I can tell the truth about our gorgeous St. Martin trip in June: it wasn't perfect for this pregnant foodie! Can you imagine being on a tropical island and limited to no more than 12 ounces of seafood per week? There's Ed, eating his five-course lobster meal, and me with my vegetarian pasta. No tuna, no king mackerel, no swordfish, no shark allowed at all. (Well, I could have had canned tuna, but there was no way I was going to a French island and eating canned tuna imported from the US.) No wine, no champagne, no fruity alchoholic drinks in coconuts topped with little paper umbrellas. (I was, however, delighted to discover that a virgin passionfruit daiquiri is just as refreshing and drinkable as the kind with the rum.) Nothing raw, so no sushi and no lovely runny French cheeses made with raw milk. (Fortunately, the hard Dutch cheeses were plenty tasty.)

My HMO insisted that I consult with their travel clinic before the trip, and their recommendations included no street food, no tap water, and no fruits or vegetables that I didn't boil or at least wash myself in bottled water (which leaves out eating any salad on the island). In other words, no fun. But for goodness' sake, St. Martin is a highly civilized place, not a third-world country rife with disease and sewage in the streets! After checking with the American who ran our hotel, she assured me that she had eaten restaurant salads and drunk the tap water there when she was pregnant, that I had nothing to worry about.

Still, I limited myself to one salad and not many meals from the lolos. On the other hand, I did have bites of all of Ed's seafood dishes, finally having one all to myself our last day there. I even once ordered an escargot appetizer, telling myself that since they're land dwellers, snails don't count as shellfish.

And you know what? I'm so happy that we're going to have a croissant that I don't mind not being able to eat all the fish I want! But nonetheless, I'll be glad for a nice ripe brie, a glass of red wine, and some tuna sashimi come February.